Bernie Sanders, First Libertarian Socialist?

Could he be two thirds of the way there?

Ground-breaking research by political science experts (actually me, Googling) reveals that a new breed of American politician has been discovered, the first ever "libertarian socialist." And it has a name: Bernie Sanders.

Oxymoronic, you say? Call me crazy, but the senator from the Peoples' Republic of Vermont is at least two-thirds of the way there on the road to free minds and free markets.

There are three issue frames in politics. Foreign. Social. Economic. Sanders is as non-interventionist as Ron Paul on foreign policy. He is as pro-choice and pro-gay rights as Yahweh on social issues (Yahweh has come a long way in the past several decades). And like most of us libertarians who despise crony capitalism, Bernie eschews the big three rent-seeking lobbies: Big Investment Banks, Big Pharma Drug Dealers, and Big War Profiteers.

Granted, he wants free health care, free day care, free college tuition, and free scoops of Ben and Jerry's. But hey, nobody's perfect.

However, when you compare and contrast Bernie with the only other possible, and most would say presumptive 2016 nominee for the Donkey Party, the distaff half of The Westchester Hillbillies, Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sanders looks downright Ayn Rand-ish. The Warrior Queen, who voted for the Iraq War, which Bernie opposed, and who sees America as the "indispensable nation", flies the flag for the Neo-Con Lite wing of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. When Hill and Bill last occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that piece of real estate was virtually owned and operated by their Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin and his Goldman Sachs investment banking house, an oligarchy capitalist outfit against which Sanders frequently inveighs.

And when you put Sanders up against the Trump Circus, also known as the Republican primary field, he is practically the headmaster of the Austrian School of Economics, though he often takes the wrong exit and gets onto the road to serfdom. But correct me if I am wrong, wasn't it Jeb Bush's older brother W who gave us Part D, the biggest socialized medicine gambit since LBJ 's guns-and-butter fiscal policies saddled us with the Texas-sized taxpayer bill for Medicare and Medicaid? And wasn't it the House of Bush/Cheney that gave us the huge, really the hugest elective war since Vietnam, to benefit their friends in the House of Saud?

Sanders certainly supported the costly federal drugging of old people, but that price tag pales in comparison to the trillions in taxpayer dollars the Bushies doled out to Halliburton and the other war profiteers for the Mess-in-Potamia. But it should be noted that Sanders thinks we should have the liberty to buy our drugs at the cheaper prices paid by our neighbors to the North, those American wannabees, those Molson-swilling Canadians.

So, when it comes down to what increasingly seems to be the only three realistic possibilities for Leader of the Free World in 2016—Hillary, Jeb, or Bernie—who would libertarians feel most comfortable with, for four more years?

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And way too many choices. We need someone who will decrease the amount of choices in anything we have. It would be better if he were to decrease the amount of choice to only one, that way we can’t be conflicted by whether or not we made the right choice.

For an idea of how likely it is that Barnett would be among Trump’s choices for the Supreme Court, you should look at this photo of Trump posing with the people who would be vetting his potential nominees.

I guess you were right about me not being able to “think out of the box,” because I’m having trouble making the connection between the minimum wage issue and the desirability of being ruled by Trump’s police state friends. Trump describes Edward Snowden as a “traitor.” Do you really think his judicial appointees will be civil libertarians?

If these candidates are my only choices (and they are not), I would vote for Bernie if for no other reason than he would probably not get us involved in another civil war half way around the world, and he wants drug profits to go to Colorado rather than the Sinaloa cartel.

No i support none of them, and I feel if you vote for someone you are also condoning all the actions that person does in your name including every act of state violence (coerced, or otherwise legislated behavior) inflicted upon those who did not support them. If i vote for Myself i am saying that I feel not a single one of the candidates is worthy of my support (which they arent)

*for a longer explanation socialism is anathema to liberty and the two cannot co-exist in a rational sense. the principals of liberty rest on the idea of individual ownership and private property, socialism is just asking permission and following orders except with more legalized government theft…. If a people are economically free they can use the market to guide individual freedom, if a people are economically enslaved they are shoehorned into the choices made available to them. Even if Bernie Sanders wasn’t a complete liar and despicable waste of a pile of human feces there is no gaurentee the things he does will not be used as a weapon by the next “more socialist than thou” sociopath from the regressive movement.

to reason editors… really what the fuck? do you even know where you are?

Sometimes, you wonder if they just do these things just to piss us off. And have a good laugh when we behave just as they expected.

Nick: Let’s see, it’s been a little quite on the Western Front, lately . . . and we’re still waiting for a retraction from Jared Polis . . .what say you, Matt?

Matt: Well, Nick, how about we post a column by a Democrat, which sorta offers up Bernie Sanders as “libertarian-ish”, now that Rand Paul’s campaign is tanking . . .. Let’s see if our dear trolls – I mean, readers – take the bait . . .

Nick: Great idea, Matt! Let’s post a column and see how many gaskets we can blow . . .

there are no viable candidates, they are all establishment shills. Just because Sanders is a union establishment shill doesnt make him an “outsider” this whole article is proof that peak derp is only a fabled concept.

Hayek had no problem with universal guaranteed income and social insurance programs, so this isn’t all that far-fetched. A UGI or even Milton Friedman’s negative income tax would be a preferred alternative to the the myriad of welfare programs that seem as much about social engineering and supporting a bureaucratic middle-class as helping poor people.

I know such a program would give anarcho-capitalists vapors, but it would likely be less intrusive in the market, and provide greater utility for actual poor people, then the billions we dump into welfare, economic development, and the rest of that centrally-planned horsepucky.

Central planning more than social welfare should be the great enemy of libertarians and capitalists. Some how, even as more and more people seem to identify themselves as libertarians, central economic planning is more and more prevalent.

If “socialist” Bernie Sanders certainly may be a better than Trump, Bush, Carson, Clinton, etc. (or the LP candidate who will will maybe 1% of the vote) if he really is the enemy of state capitalism and tolerant of actual market activities. That is to say, his version of socialism is about social welfare for the least among us rather than an Indian-style permit raj or state-owned industry.

My big problem with Bernie, though, is that he doesn’t propose scrapping this mountain of junk legislation that the government has accumulated over the centuries; he just wants to add more.

I’m not automatically against some very basic social welfare programs like a negative income tax… But in my view, the top priority right now needs to be getting rid of the cronyist, protectionist programs that are causing so much poverty to begin with. Get rid of minimum wage, subsidies for businesses that kiss the right peoples’ asses, protectionist tariffs and taxes, most occupational licensing, excessive environmental regulations, nonsensical workplace safety rules, certificate of need laws, and anything else that is impeding people from making a living, and then I’ll be glad to consider social welfare programs.

And who knows? After we get rid of all these stupid laws that bog down the economy, we might find that what little poverty remains can easily be ameliorated by private charity, making social welfare programs unnecessary.

“My big problem with Bernie, though, is that he doesn’t propose scrapping this mountain of junk legislation that the government has accumulated over the centuries; he just wants to add more.”

This. Hayek, Friedman, and other classical-lib style minarchists supported NIT and universal incomes as alternatives to existing welfare programs, which served to hand out political favors arbitrarily (and in the process secure political backing from the beneficiaries of said payments). If you can rip out the arbitrary factor from welfare payments, you can transform them into something other than a political football and weapon of class warfare.

That said, this would never happen for the simple reason that a) beneficiaries want more programs and goodies, not cuts and alternative systems and economist nerdity and b) no politician in a democratic nation would want to give up his best political weapon, which is to somehow wangle the majority onto his side at the expense of the minority.

To support the elimination of arbitrary programs that divide the nation into us-es and them-s is to slit your own throat politically.

“Nonsensical workplace safety rules” So you’re willing to work under the conditions people worked under in 1870? Work in an asbestos plant with not even a throwaway dust mask? On a steel-construction site with no hard hat? Climb a fractioning column with no safety harness? Just what does “workplace safety” mean for you? A comfy cushion for your computer chair?

Maybe I should have worded that differently. I’m talking about a portion of workplace safety laws that are outdated and/or pointless. An example that comes to mind is that in my state, there is a restriction on minors working on powered industrial machinery (now that I look it up, the labor laws say all “manufacturing” is off-limits to those under 16).

I’m not saying 14 year olds should be driving forklifts or working a pneumatic crane truck, but that law results in a lot of BS. I worked at a small auto parts shop for about five years starting when I was 14, and I did mostly hand-assembly of small parts (snapping things together, putting on rubber washers, etc.). There was one operation that required a pneumatic pump to press on a small clip. It was a tiny pump; no bigger than a “tall boy” beer can. That thing didn’t even have the force to cause significant injury even if you stuck your finger right in there; I know, because I worked on it later when I turned 16. Still, anyone under 16 could not touch it.

Many workplace safety laws haven’t been updated in decades, and they fail to account for new inventions like light curtains and “idiot-proof” sensors. They also don’t differentiate between the size or power of machinery; they treat a tiny pneumatic pump exactly the same as a 4000-ton hydroforming press. They treat the deep fryer at McDonalds exactly the same as an industrial smelter. While the effect of these laws seems small, they add up. There are millions of them.

CHICAGO — A McDonald’s employee’s slip and fall into a deep fryer in 2001 instigated a legal battle that still has not reached trial, despite the efforts of a plaintiff’s firm that smells cash (and grease). In August 2001, Julie Ann Wynard was cleaning the deep fryers at an Illinois McDonald’s , when she allegedly lost her footing on a slippery floor and her hand plunged into a fryer containing hot oil. Wynard sustained burns to her hand as a result. Wynard filed a premises liability suit in 2003, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, seeking a minimum of $30,000 in damages from McDonald’s and Frymaster, the manufacturers of the fryer in which her hand was injured. The suit alleges McDonald’s maintained inadequate rules pertaining to cleaning of the deep fryers, provided unreasonably dangerous fryers, designed unreasonably slippery floors, and failed to warn the plaintiff of the aforementioned hazards. The complaint alleges Frymaster was careless in the design and manufacture of the fryer in question, failing to provide warning of the dangers that could result from contact with heated grease. Wynard is represented by a Chicago personal injury firm specializing in all types of tort cases, from slip-and-falls to animal attacks and toy accidents. In 2006, the firm won a $5.3 million verdict for the family of a construction worker killed in a crane collapse. Other verdicts included a $7.5 million award in a medical malpractice case, a $2.5 million wrongful death verdict…

Is it that deep fryers are too dangerous for minors? Your article does not mention any age for this employee.

But let’s suppose just for a second that deep fryers are too dangerous for anyone under 18 to operate… What about the pie oven? When I worked at McDonalds, I was still not allowed to put a tray of frozen apple pies into the TV-sized oven because of labor laws. So where’s your horror story for that one?

The fact that someone got injured from a deep-fryer one time does not disprove the point that many workplace safety laws are completely pointless and/or outdated. You’ll notice from my previous post (the one you replied to) that I don’t believe ALL workplace safety laws should be repealed; just that SOME of them are doing more harm than good.

You worded it correctly. You said “get rid of … nonsensical workplace safety rules.” Anyone with half a brain, which seems to exclude Gene Poole, knows what that means. You did not say to get rid of all workplace safety rules because they are nonsensical.

When we have ‘Star Trek’ levels of technology (I.e. Unlimited free energy, energy/matter replicators, super advanced super cheap medical care, etc.) I can see government providing a basic level of subsistence to everyone. As it would be so cheap and simple to. Do so with those kinds of near lit less resources without strangling the economy and crushing personal liberty to implement it.

But we don’t live in that world. People who don’t have any money need to work to oy their way. And ideally, private charity can handle the needs of those with crippling limitations that legitimately prevent them from working. Unlike say, my father’s bridge player friend, who plays bridge tournaments full time supported by full disability as working (as a high school teacher). Makes him ‘nervous’.

The difference between Hayek and Friedman and Sanders is that Hayek and Friedman firmly rooted their philosophy in individual liberty and free economies. They were classical liberals and were willing to accept government welfare programs but only because they thought there were neighborhood and free rider effects that made market solutions implausible.

From what I can tell, Sanders comes at this from a completely different perspective rooted in concepts of social justice. And that matters. Hayek and Friedman could be counted on to err on the side of smaller government. Sanders…not so much. He just wants his type of big government.

I don’t disagree at all. However, and at the same time, the practical reality of modern “limited government” politics seems to be about cutting social welfare programs (admittedly flawed efforts) not to shrink government but rather to expand subsidy for rich people at the expense of free markets.

We have a politics where Rand Paul rails against food stamps but believes federal subsidy for tobacco growers is fine and dandy. Food stamps are a terrible program for a number of reasons, but I can respect the intent of trying to feed poor people. I can’t offer the same agreeable disagreement toward giving my tax dollars to people who grow cancer. Or billionaire sports owners. Or film productions. Or “capitalists” moving a factory or corporate office from one town to another.

This is less about Sanders than it is about finding libertarian solutions to the valid concerns about systemic poverty, etc raised by Sanders and have clearly struck a cord with a sizeable segment of Americans. In doing so we may be able to build a new political consensus in support of a smaller, more humane government and freer markets. Or we can continue getting herpy-derpy about Wayne Allen Root or whatever non-factor Libertarian runs this time.

fwiw, my isidewith score put Bernie in second place behind Rand Paul (at 63% and 80%, respectively). Not that I can ever conceive of voting for Bernie, because philosophically he’s a loon, but given the crapfest of current options, he’s “decent”.

Last time around I was somewhere over 95% for both Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, and below 80% on everyone else, so, you know. This year sucks.

Free market socialism sounds good if we can get rid of all those on the dole and government corruption. All drugs must have generic prices and payroll taxes have to be slashed by 50%, war profiteers should be booted. Support for foreign governments must be ended including Israel and Egypt. More goodies will be coming.

As “noninterventionist as Ron Paul in foreign policy”? Sure he voted against the Iraq war that one time – but then he subsequently and repeatedly voted to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (So that ostensible counter-point – “that price tag pales in comparison to the trillions in taxpayer dollars the Bushies doled out to Halliburton and the other war profiteers for the Mess-in-Potamia.” – doesn’t land, since Bernie helped send that money, too.) Bernie voted to bomb Yugoslavia which killed over 500 civilians. He’s sent foreign aid to various governments in support of military actions and coups. And foreign policy isn’t just war – it’s trade and all interactions with foreign nations – and in that regard he’s even more isolationist than Trump: an unapologetic closed-border protectionist, a national socialist. Give me a damn break.

Maybe in speech, but certainly not in record. Look only at the aforementioned war funding he’s supported, the long record of support for essentially all government spending (that in essentially every single case grants money to one special interest or another), his support for the misnamed Affordable Care Act (which is a boon to Big Pharma), and his support for the federal reserve and fractional reserve banking – the main reason banks are big in the first place.

I’m willing to extend the “libertarian” label to a wide swath of people, but to call Bernie a potential libertarian is to destroy the meaning of words.

–

Also, technically, Bernie can’t be the “first libertarian socialist” since libertarian socialism is already a thing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism Incidentally, Bernie’s not that either.

Their content is sinking further and further from the province of reason, and into the irrationalist leftwing swamp of international collectivism (open borders) to the level of indulging such a leftwing anti-concept as that of “libertarian socialism”. This place is going down the shitter

Fact: there are no political solutions for _any_ problem, never have been, never will be, not even “libertarian” solutions.

As long as you believe that political solutions really do exist, dear reader, you will remain firmly ensconced inside “the Matrix”, i.e. exactly where the Obama’s, Trumps, Sanders and all the rest want you to be:-)

To be fair, “individualist anarchist” is a blanket term covering several schools of anarchist thought. To be sure, anarcho-capitalists like Hoppe or Rothbard could not accurately be called “libertarian socialists”.

Anarchism is anathema to socialism, i dont know how you or the hundreds of “An”-coms can confuse the concept of having NO STATE with having the means of production controlled by a group of people who are not the producers. Anarchism is only non-contradictory under the Voluntaryist/ Anarcho-capitalist schools of thought, everything else requires dictating to someone how to live their lives/spend their resources/ etc etc IMHO if its not Voluntary its violence

Anarchism is anathema to socialism, i dont know how you or the hundreds of “An”-coms can confuse the concept of having NO STATE with having the means of production controlled by a group of people who are not the producers.

Where did you get the idea that I’m an an-com? Where did you get the idea that I conflate the existence of the state with the existence of natural hierarchies?

IMHO if its not Voluntary its violence

Not all violence is unethical or illegitimate. Aggression however, is.

wasnt saying You are an An-com i was comparing your level of understanding of Anarchism to that of an An-com. I got that idea because you blended 2 concepts that are diametrically opposed, but i also didnt see who wrote it, now that went back and read who i was replying to I know you do understand it so my question to you is; Can anarchism exist in a socialist environment? And if Socialism is done in an Anarchist environment doesn’t that just make it charity as its not the forcible redistribution of resources?

I wasnt saying all violence is bad but it is when you are forcing a concept of thought upon an individual (socialism) which is why i said if its not Voluntary its violence, meaning if its not voluntarily decided upon its necessarily violently imposed upon those who did not agree

I got that idea because you blended 2 concepts that are diametrically opposed

I even wrote “libertarian socialist” in scare quotes.

Can anarchism exist in a socialist environment?

If you’ll allow me to Bill Clinton you; That depends on what the definition of “in” is. I could see there being an anarchist enclave within a wider area of socialist jurisdiction if the socialist appetite for the wealth of others could somehow remain subdued. But can anarchism exist compatibly within a socialist system? No. Socialism requires some kind of centralized institution whose authority is derived from it’s aggressive capabilities.

And if Socialism is done in an Anarchist environment doesn’t that just make it charity as its not the forcible redistribution of resources?

I wouldn’t call that socialism. Socialism requires aggressive force, if it lacks teeth, it’s charity or “socialism by contract”, which would be like some factory owner giving equity to wage earners. It may not be a smart business move, but capitalism affords you the right to run your company like a socialist, straight into the ground.

Socialism can survive inside an anarchist system or any capitalist system and can even persist for a time, but it can never even begin to survive without a bedrock of capitalism and property rights to base it upon, loathe as socialists are to admit it. Hippie communes were often owned as private property, but operated communally within that group, but it was still fundamentally private property.

Hell even the socialist states of the last century, USSR et cetera, weren’t able to produce goods and services without gleaning price data from western economies in order to price their own inputs and outputs.

Richman and the other bleeding-heart libertarians remain strongly pro-market. In many ways, Richman is the most Rothbard-esque writer still published on this site outside of Doherty.

Other people who identify as libertarian socialist use _libertarian_ in the old continental sense, which is fundamentally collectivist and opposed to private property, like all 19th-century socialist movements. Chomsky is one of those, which is why he’s always lecturing the hoi polloi about how American libertarians aren’t “real” libertarians in the historical sense.

Which is kind of odd for a linguist to be doing, particularly since libertarians lifted the term out of socialist mothballs only after having _liberal_ stolen from them by socialists a century before and progressive Democrats earlier in the 20th century. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Noam and his fellow libertarian purists had an ax to grind against anyone who supports allodial property and individualism.

Your use of ‘allodial property’ (and all my past conversations with you) tells me that you know your shit and you probably place Rothbard and Hoppe high in your pantheon of favorite theorists.

What gets me about the old timey anarchists, is why they think they’re anarchists when they support policies that could not possibly be implemented without a centralized, monopolistic, economic and legal authority to force compliance with their redistribution schemes. A state by any other name.

And Chomsky supposed to be this smart guy and deep thinker, how he misses that glaringly obvious disconnect I’ll never understand.

Yep. How is it that serious and intelligent people can believe things that are obviously ridiculous, like the brotherhood of man when the majority of people are indifferent to one another at best? Last election cycle, self-professed anarchist Chomsky was actively praising single-payer, nationalized healthcare, which is either way too meta for a simple country philosopher or utterly insane.

Smith pointed out the selfish nature of humanity a hundred years before Darwin and socialism died a hard death a generation ago, but the utopian, collectivist impulse just keeps on going. Which only goes to prove the point about humanity’s constrained nature.

“So, when it comes down to what increasingly seems to be the only three realistic possibilities for Leader of the Free World in 2016?Hillary, Jeb, or Bernie?who would libertarians feel most comfortable with, for four more years?”

Ok, you can spend tonight getting fucked by Leatherface wearing the strap on from Se7en, being fisted by The Hulk, or having Rosie O’Donnell. Dip you nuts act in sulfuric acid. Which option are libertarians most comfortable?

Here’s a wild idea. Instead of Nick publishing faggoty shit from faggoty progs, maybe he could publish something from a conservatarian. Maybe Gutfeld or Andrew Wilkow or someone like that. That would be fucking novel.

And when you put Sanders up against the Trump Circus, also known as the Republican primary field, he is practically the headmaster of the Austrian School of Economics,

Terry Micheal, I’m adding your name to the list of dumbest fucks to ever post on Reason. The guy who thinks having more than one deodorant brand starves children, is even loosely analogous to an Austrian school economist? The worst Republican in the field is no where near that level of economic illiteracy.

Does Reason let you post here without going through any editorial scrutiny or what?

The problem is that if you don’t protect the intellectual property inherent in the design and manufacture of a new drug product, you won’t get any new drugs.

Why should I spend hundreds of millions of dollars investigating new treatment possibilities, designing a molecule to help people suffering from the disease, and getting it approved by the FDA, EMA, etc., if as soon as it is released everyone else on the planet is free to steal your idea and make it themself, without needing to price it high enough to recoup the R&D costs?

Right now, R&D is the lifeblood of any pharma/biotech company. The are constantly researching new ideas and trying to get them to market, to replace the old ideas that are coming off patent and are facing competition from generics. Remove their patent protection altogether and all that money going into R&D will now go into Marketing instead.

*smells like a statist* This is a logical fallacy, If there are no products to develop what will be marketed? If someone can make it better, cheaper or safer, should they be prevented from helping others? IP laws only allow Pharmaceuticals to become Big-Pharma in the first place because with the laws they can R&D their own products with no worries of competition or costs, as everything is subsidized by taxpayers and the profits are privatized. In effect you create government enforced monopolies on potentially life saving cures and in the course legalize price gouging, where competition would drive the prices down and produce more options and products.

What i am saying is, if an idea is worthy people will pay for it, if youre the one who invented it then youre the first one who gets to profit from it, but beyond that you shouldnt get a special government enforced monopoly on the production of anything, it ruins the potential advancements that humanity as a whole would have if not artificially stifled by the government and IP laws Just think if Tesla hadn’t been Fucked over by the con Edison and JP Morgan how much better we would have society, and if Teslas ideas weren’t buried and stolen under IP laws someone could continue his work. IP laws are a heinous disregard for humanity for the purpose of individual greed and are only enforceable by the monopoly on violence held by the government.

The fact that the name “Sanders” and “Austrian School” were used in the same sentence, without them being an example of opposites, has caused me to have yet another new appreciation of the great heights that stupidity can reach in human beings.

I’ve had it up to here with Bernie fucking Sanders. People get incredibly stupid when it comes to presidents and presidential candidates. They forget that presidents don’t make laws and can’t change anything through sheer force of will or pretty words. They don’t get that even if Bernie’s platform is somewhat to the left of Hillary’s, neither one will get everything they want out of a Republican Congress, if they get anything at all. Bernie will not magically eliminate Wall Street cronyism because he believes hard enough. The personal qualities of a candidate are only very marginally relevant to actually being president. I can’t wait for the day when President Bernie fails to pass his Unicorns for All bill and all the starry-eyed liberals decide he, too, was actually a corrupt Manchurian candidate out to further the interests of Wall Street, and they turn to whatever pure socialist messiah is in line next, having done little more for their cause than sit on their couch eating Cheetos.

“They forget that presidents don’t make laws and can’t change anything through sheer force of will or pretty words.”

No. See:

The entire rule of Abraham Lincoln Executive Order 6102 Korematsu vs. U.S.

In reality, the way that executives work is that 1) the executive does what it wants 2) some people complain and file suit 3) when the suit finally reaches such-and-such court several years later, the judges hem and haw and usually support the executive abuse (they were appointed by an executive, after all), which usually doesn’t matter, as the abuse is already old news at this point and the president who initiated it has one foot out of office.

The executive is there to open Pandora’s box. The legislature is there to condemn that bastard who opened Pandora’s box, and the judiciary is there to explain why opening Pandora’s box constitutes interstate commerce, as the presence of demons in Washington DC affects the economic choices of residents in every other state of the union.

Right, i suppose but the better question is; Do you think anyone is actually counting the votes anymore? or Do you think that even if the votes were counted that they are not changed deliberately, and that anyone would really notice if they were so long as one of the members of the oligarchy still gets elected?

That….is actually logical. So I will respond respectfully. I add that neither party is interested in doing anything meaningful about Wall Street because both of them take so much money from them. And in recent times, every administration has been loaded with former Goldman Sach’s executives and the like. I dont want to strangle their business, or anyone else’s, but all this guaranteed bail out bullshit and lack of real oversight of their shenanigans has got to go.

Fact: there are no political solutions for _any_ problem, never have been, never will be; not even “Ron Paul”, or “libertarian” solutions.

Fact: As long as you believe that political solutions really do exist, dear reader, you will remain firmly ensconced inside “the Matrix”, i.e. exactly where the Obama’s, Trumps, Sanders , Pauls and all the rest of them want you to be:-)

Fact: Reasom mag is an “inside the matrix” site full of “inside the matrix” writers working steadfastly to keep alive yours and others silly fantasies of political “solutions” to yours, or the country’s, or the world’s problems.

His books read like they’re written by an angry juco student. I really wanted to like the book on Roosevelt and Wilson, and there were some useful nuggets in there, but Cousin Andrew is an awful, hectoring writer.

The intern/beast of burden noticed that clicks were down the past couple of months with Rand’s campaign flagging, so the parasitic alien worms who took over Gillespie and co. several years ago ordered a bat-turd-insane syndicated article to generate clicks.

It seems to be working pretty well, which is why the alien worms are running Reason rather than some econ nerd with a Ph.D. in philosophy who would pontificate about the nature of the Misesian synthetic a priori and why positivism results in bad economics.

The intern/beast of burden noticed that clicks were down the past couple of months with Rand’s campaign flagging, so the parasitic alien worms who took over Gillespie and co. several years ago ordered a bat-turd-insane syndicated article to generate clicks.

Hmm, yes. A sound theory.

It seems to be working pretty well, which is why the alien worms are running Reason rather than some econ nerd with a Ph.D. in philosophy who would pontificate about the nature of the Misesian synthetic a priori and why positivism results in bad economics.

Shit, if there were articles like that on here, I could actually read them for a change.

I guess I could always peruse mises.org for that sort of thing, but the writing there is often too platitudinal and rarely tells me anything I don’t already know.

Libertarian socialists are like anarchistic socialists. This put on their ruby slippers and click their heels together three times saying “there’s no place like social utopia” and people get along by magic!

Just because it cant be clearly stated enough There is no such thing as a Libertarian Socialist There is no such thing as a Libertarian Socialist There is no such thing as a Libertarian Socialist There is no such thing as a Libertarian Socialist There is no such thing as a Libertarian Socialist There is no such thing as a Libertarian Socialist There is no such thing as a Libertarian Socialist There is no such thing as a Libertarian Socialist There is no such thing as a Libertarian Socialist There is no such thing as a Libertarian Socialist

It would be easy to call the author crazy and/or stupid (which may be true), but it’s more likely that he hopes to confuse na?ve young libertarians.

If you want to compare, Sanders is much more National Socialist (federal free education, national healthcare, profit sharing for large industries, against investment income, favors increasing old age pensions, etc.) than libertarian.

The key point is that socialist want a strong federal government in order to allow socialist politicians to control society. Libertarians want people to be free from overbearing federal government as much as possible.

Multiple articles talking about how “crazy” or “insane” the GOP candidates are, then a brief, pensive one about how a self avowed socialist – a statist’s statist – just might be compatible with libertarianism.

Never mind the rank insanity of anyone thinking Hillary should have access to government power.

The day the libertarian “tribe” moves from “free markets and free minds” to “libertarian socialism” is the day I say – goddamn you all to hell. I’ll become a born-again Evangelical Christian, cancelling my subscription and booking my baptism.

Most pharmaceuticals are hugely expensive to research, develop and test so that they can be approved for general use. Once brought to market they are relatively cheap to manufacture. Canadians get drugs cheaper because their socialist health care service is a monopsony and can dictate out much of the R&D costs out of the price of approved drugs (they do not pay have all drugs under their plan). The drug companies accept this because they can recoup the R&D costs in the freer market US. The only reason to allow Americans to buy drugs from Canada is to blow up the system by which Canadians are getting their new drugs subsidized by American consumers. That is theCanadian govetnment made noises to nip this in the bud The last time it installed about seriously. The danger of course is that this could blow up the R&D cycle depending on how the drug companies deal with it.

There’s no “could” about blowing up the R&D cycle. If pharma companies can’t recoup their R&D costs they will no longer go for home runs. Then we’ll have far fewer advances in drug innovation, and most people will either wonder why or be blissfully unaware at the terrible damage done by price controls.

Thank you for being a voice of reason. All these all or nothing divisive categories. eg “you can’t be a libertarian socialist” are BS. We need to collectively realize ideologies are not all or nothing, anyone can have libertarian beliefs and be something else. I naively used to think the blue party was that party of peace and social justice, then I got turned on to Ron Paul. Now the democrats are as alienating to me as the GOP. I don’t agree with all libertarian principles, but I agree with most of them.

Ah, yes, libertarian socialists. The people who believe that you have the right to live your life exactly as freely as they say you can live it. The people who believe in your absolute right to your “fair share” of your property and the fruits of your labor.

Sanders says “in my view it would be hard to make the case..that the US…is a just society, or anything resembling a just society today.”

He then goes on to equate justice in with income equality and, in a particularly creative manner, does so while mentioning the Bible. He has no shame in stoking the most base human emotion of envy and the greed the have-nots have for other peoples’ $. Make no mistake: He is not appealing to our better instincts to help our fellow man by taking personal action, he is calling for class warfare.

This man is a danger to this country as were his predecessors (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and the Castros) to people who suffered from this ideology put into action.

I salute him for being “brave” to go speak at Liberty, but that’s about it.

Libertarians are going to have to come to terms with the effects of ARP (Automation, Robotics, Programming) technology on employment. Education is linear, and technological advances in ARP are exponential. it is therefore getting increasingly difficult to keep up. Furthermore, those bootstraps have a habit of disappearing at the worst possible times; newly jobless – particularly minimum wage jobless – may simply not have the savings to afford training in the new fields that ARP is creating.

In addition, many people think that the number of jobs created are not keeping up with the number of jobs destroyed. For example, a dozen or so programmers and a few hundred engineers, accountants and assembly line workers can create a robot that replaces half a million fast food workers. Will there then be a need for half a million fast food droid repair persons? I don’t think so.

Libertarians should be considered how to ethically, politically, economically and socially/culturally handle a situation where 50%, 75% or more of the population is permanently unemployed.

Libertarians might do well to google “Robert Anton Wilson the RICH economy” and “C H Douglas Social Credit” and read about them with open minds.

Libertarians are going to have to come to terms with the effects of ARP (Automation, Robotics, Programming) technology on employment.

Very true. Look what a disaster automation has done to the agricultural industry. At one point, 80% of the population worked on farms. Now only 2% do.

Who told them that growing all that food with only a fraction of the manpower needed 100 years ago was a good idea? It’s very silly, since all the ex-farmhands are out of work and have no money to buy food.

We have the lowest labor participation rate in modern history. We are accumulating a perpetual underclass that doesn’t have the intelligence or skills to take advantage of the alternative employment opportunities generated by technology.

Also, it would be ridiculous to assume that there’s any natural law of innovation that states that if you find a way to do what used to be 100 peoples’ work with 1 person, that there will be corresponding innovations or opportunities for the other 99. While that might happen sometimes, and at some inflection points, it would be counter-intuitive to assume that it represents some inviolable law.

More likely, at some point it will take only a tiny fraction of the human population to produce all the wants and needs of the remainder.

Bernie Sanders has the exact same position on free trade and the TPP as Donald Trump.

Gandhi was a great statesman but a horrible economist. Just as the ignorant in the USA argue that American workers who earn $15 per hour should not have to compete with Chinese workers who make $2 per hour, Gandhi thought that Indian workers should not have to compete with American and European workers who have the benefit of modern machines. As a result India adopted protectionism. In 1947 the per capita income of India was similar to countries such a South Korea.

“….Equally unhelpful in terms of addressing the income and wealth inequality which results in the overinvestment cycle that caused the depression are various non-tax factors. Issues such a minimum wage laws, unwed mothers, globalization, free trade, unionization, problems with our education system and infrastructure can increase the income and wealth inequality. However, these are extremely minor when compared to the shift of the tax burden from the rich to the middle class. It is the compounding effect of shift away from taxes on capital income such as dividends each year as the rich get proverbially richer which is the prime generator of inequality?”http://seekingalpha.com/article/1543642

Libertarians and Socialists are oil and water. Dear god, What kind of mental midget writes an article like this? Whoever you are, go write for Mother Earth, cartoon network or al jazeera or something… Just leave us Libertarians alone.

Bernie is more “libertarian” than Reason is. For instance, he is foursquare against for-profit prisons which Reason has been touting for many years, and which have been writing legislation at ALEC and lobbying state legislators, congressional members and staff, and elected executives to pass more draconian punishments to put ever more people in prison.

He also opposed the Medicare “Part D” and “Medicare Advantage” scams pushed by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and even by AARP, which profited immensely from sales of those Advantage insurance policies. It forbade the government to negotiate drug prices, for instance, as it does with the V.A., and it was designed to wreck Social Security (a big priority for your sponsors, the Koch brothers) by not providing an additional funding source for the added, but somewhat dubious, benefits. That was more an operation by Denny Hastert and Tom DeLay, two pols who should have spent time in jail for their “alleged” crimes.

To simply answer your final question, none of the three you provide as a choice are acceptable.

If you’re implying that you are a Libertarian, then perhaps it’s time to create another acronym, “LINO”. I’m sure you can figure out the words that relate to the letters. Look up “RINO” if you need help.

I just started 6 weeks ago and I’ve gotten 2 check for a total of $4,200…this is the best decision I made in a long time! “Thank you for giving me this extraordinary opportunity to make extra money from home. This extra cash has changed my life in so many ways, visit this following website for more details,,, thank you!”

The problem with most political philosophies is that they are often absolutist and orthodox. There’s no reason why you can’t both have individual freedom, and help your fellow citizens, to the betterment of everybody. And it is better for everybody. After all, poor people aren’t good customers, not having money and all. I have long wished for a party which believed in absolute freedom for individuals, while wanting to help disadvantaged citizens become educated and prosperous. This means putting corporations and large businesses on a shorter leash, and balancing their outsized power with regulation, and by promoting unions. Yet, a childish notion has taken hold of many libertarians and Republicans that corporations should be given a free hand, while the right of workers to organize is legislated away, and somehow, magically, everyone will be better off. This, in spite of the fact that these types of policy have increased the wealth gap. The Democrats are little better, and certainly no advocates of freedom. We are not simply individuals. We belong to a country, and are dependent upon each other, not only for security, but for our economic well-being. Bernie Sanders seems to be the only candidate that recognizes this.

Maybe first presidential candidate, but in Seattle there’s an indian woman elected under ‘Alternative Socialism’ championing the same things Bernie is, and has subsequently caused damage in the name of ‘equality’.

Bernie’s been growing on me … in a field of sewage, the’s the flower poking up. I also think he can be reasoned with and will learn. I think he has actual conservative leanings, aka that he’ll be pragmatic and not radical. But, I’m not a libertarian — I’m a “balance of powers”. I think gov is there for a reason but it has a built in tendency to grow and so you must put in a tendency to shrink to keep a dynamic balance. Many ways of doing this.

Reason actually publishes this crap? A former Democratic National Committee press secretary offers something that does not even remotely resemble reason, and ‘Reason’ magazine publishes it? The Libertarians really are draining the term ‘liberty’ of any meaning.

Bernie Sanders has a heated discussion about high drug prices and Universal Health Care. “We spend far more per capita on health care than do people in any other country. Thirty million people today have zero health insurance and many more are under-insured. How do we create Universal Health Care for every man, woman and child, and do it in a cost effective way? Other countries do it, the United States of America can do it. The private insurance companies don’t like this idea. We’re going to put them out of business. And the drug companies that are ripping off the American people and charging us the highest prices in the world don’t like the idea. Tough luck! The greed of the pharmaceutical industry is killing Americans,” Sanders said.

“I heard the gentleman say something a moment ago about putting homos in the military? was the gentleman talking about the thousands of men and women who have put their lives on the line fighting countless wars, defending this country? YOU HAVE INSULTED THOUSANDS of men and women who put their lives on the line!” Sanders said. Contrast that strong defense of Gay soldiers with Hillary Clinton in 2004 talking about same-sex marriage: “I believe marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman, a fundamental bedrock principle that it exists between a man and a woman, going back into the midst of history.” Watch Bernie Sanders defend Gay Soldiers during Bill Clinton Admin. on Youtube:https://youtu.be/MAFlQ6fU4GM

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asks presidential candidate Bernie Sanders if he is surprised he is leading in Iowa and New Hampshire. Sanders said, “We are doing well because of the issues we are talking about. Something is wrong in this country when the middle-class continues to disappear, almost all new income and wealth goes to the top 1%; when millions of families cannot afford to send their kids to college. We need a political revolution that says that the billionaire class can’t have it all, that we need a Congress and a government that represents all of us and not just large campaign contributors. That is what is resonating with the American people,” Sanders said.

Uhhh… Libertarian Socialism has been around for 200 years, and its actually the tradition out of which modern libertarianism was born.

I actually believe that it is quite relevant to the premise of this article. If socialism is not understood in the proper context, it is impossible to actually have real dialogue between left and right. Libertarian socialism is actually the intellectual foundation for both political ideologies, If libertarians continue to ignore this aspect of their political heritage in favor of the more palatable classical liberal economic tradition from which libertarianism draws its roots, we will never be able to reconcile our differences with people who share common ground.

Libertarian socialism, aka. anarcho-syndicalism is actually a very old concept going back centuries, and includes such adherents as Emma Goldman, Bakunin, Chomsky, Spanish Anarchists, many others. It would be nice if writers for Reason knew a little more political history. State socialism is not the only form of socialism.

That being said, Bernie Sanders is neither a libertarian nor a socialist. His economic views are entirely in line with a mainstream center-left democrat of 30 or 40 years ago. He barely registers on the “socialist” radar.

The author of the article is correct to observe that the current agenda of the American Left does actually seek to decentralize power, end rent-seeking, and generally shrink government. Wall street and Big Corp have been the driving forces behind the growth of government — this is transparently obvious to anyone who has made a study of the past century of economic history.

This is ridiculous reasoning. He comes to a few correct conclusions, but for all the wrong (and paranoid) reasons. Plus, real libertarians are staunchly pro-life. You would never go against the rights of the child to make their own choice. Otherwise you are a liberal.